Last week AUK students of Global Management had a meeting with Daniel Hoffman, a former senior executive Clandestine Services officer in the Central Intelligence Agency on the topic: The Great Game of Intelligence between the West and Russia. The speaker and the students touched such issues as failures of russian intelligence and the west in understanding the strengths of Ukraine’s resistance and country’s leadership, putin’s role in planning the war and possible scenarios of its ending.
While talking on russian propaganda, Mr. Hoffman outlined: “putin likes to practice the main principle of judo which is to use the strengths of your enemy against him. This is what he is doing against the West using our strongest elements: wide open cyber space, which promotes freedom of expression and ecommerce. When we examine putin we think what motivates this KGB guy. I believe that there is one thing which scares him, and it is a democracy. That is why Ukraine scares him the most. As long as Ukraine builds stronger economic, military ties with Europe, it is an existential threat to russia”.
Discussing with students possible war end scenarios, Mr. Hoffman stressed that today no one can predict them in detail. But everyone should get ready to all variety of scenarios including the collapse of russia and its division into separate units.
We are highly thankful to Mr. Hoffman for his open talk and insights, as well as to Mark Voyger, AUK Program Director for the MSc in Global Management for organizing the meeting.
Dnipro
